Hello everyone, you may have noticed an absence of Pentax reviews recently. Here's why...

Most publications including Camera Labs, request products from the manufacturers which are loaned for the review period, then returned. There are normally dedicated PR teams to look after such requests and dedicated loan stock for journalists.

When a publication is based in a major city, like London, this works very well, as all the manufacturers are all well-represented, and you can normally get hold of pretty much anything you want. There's a pecking-order with publications, so depending on where you rank, you may need to wait your turn, but you'll normally always get the product you want to test eventually.

Camera Labs relocated from London to a remote part of New Zealand several years ago and the situation is very different out here. There's much less loan stock available, and several manufacturers don't have their own offices here, and instead use local distributors.

Some manufacturers pay their distributors to service publications, but others don't. Of those that do, some take a very local stance and will only loan products to what they consider to be local publications. Others see sales as a priority and will only loan a product to a publication when there's literally no more customers waiting to buy it.

This is the problem with Pentax right now. I'm in touch with Pentax USA, Pentax UK and Pentax Australia, but none will loan products to publications outside of their own countries. There's no Pentax office in NZ, so they use a distributor which has been happy to loan us products to test in the past, but recently has prioritised sales over reviews. So if they have, say 10 orders for a K-7, and only ten cameras are received from Pentax, they will sell them all. Often there are back-orders waiting some time to be fulfilled, and they have priority.

As time goes on, demand for a particular product of course drops-off and some spares may become available, but several months in this business is a lifetime, and there's no commercial point in Camera Labs reviewing a product that's a few months old. Believe it or not, even a few weeks makes a big difference in page impressions and revenue generated.

So that's the problem with Pentax right now. We’re based in a very remote part of the World where stock of anything but the most popular products can be hard to come by - and right now Pentax's representatives down here are prioritising sales over reviews.

I do try my best to source kit, and I hope you'll agree that compared to publications based in London and major parts of the USA we actually manage to get most reviews of major products done in a timely fashion. I could of course relocate to a more populated region, but then I love the scenery here and believe it makes for better-looking and more interesting reviews.

So is this the end for Pentax and Camera Labs? It is unless they change their policy and either provide the local distributor with budget to service publications like ourselves in a timely fashion, or simply send product out from one of their major offices. Other manufacturers have supplied me with kit from overseas, including Asia and London, so it is possible and it does work. It's really just up Pentax now.

An on-going issue is which sales region is actually responsible for Camera Labs? I'm British, but am based in New Zealand publishing reviews which are mostly read in North America. Like most English language websites though, we have readers all over the world, and ideally there should be a division of every company set up to deal with the needs of global publications – but the fact is, most still take a very local view.

That said, this same issues faces all camera manufacturers we work with and every one apart from Pentax has figured out how to accommodate us. The bottom line is I’ve contacted all the offices and they're unwilling to supply us review models – at least not until they’re too old to be relevant to a web-based publication. So it’s stalemate as far as I’m concerned, but as you’ll know from my existing Pentax reviews, I do appreciate their work, and indeed was a passionate Pentax SLR owner myself many years ago.

If you are in contact with a representative of Pentax, perhaps you’d like to suggest they may be interested in finding a way to work with us – after all, we may be based in a remote part of the world, but our ranking is stronger than many in the more populated regions.

So if you'd like to see Pentax reviews return to Camera Labs, please drop them a line to explain why they should work with us again. I've done all I can for now.

Thank you Gordon for your explanation of the problem at hand. I think that many viewers and members of Cameralabs.com don't realize the complexity and work that goes into a website like this.

This explanation adds to my point about Pentax. I am a strong follower of the Pentax line, many people have seen that, however I do get discouraged by their product availability. Here in Canada, I myself am limited on where I can find Pentax products and I live in a very well populated city. Everything must be ordered and shipped.

Thank you again for all your hard work at Cameralabs Gordon. We do appreciate it. I will contact Pentax and explain the importance of working with Cameralabs.

I tried for some time to purchase a Pentax, but couldn't find one anywhere (in Seoul) to try out. I've seen a guy with one and asked him where he got it - japan. If a popular review/forum site such as this can't get hold of Pentax and some Olympus (eg - E30) than what chance have consumers got?

Understand what you are saying Gordon, and I will send an email to someone at Pentax (not that I expect a response but hey if the get enough...).

I think your reviews are very well structured and balanced within a review. I have often come here in the past. Its a pity there are no more Pentax reviews because this does destroy the overall balance for me (even if I had not purchased Pentax in the end).

Thought, briefly, that I could loan you my K-x for a review but I'm loving it so much I would not like to lose it for even a week!

Pentax PR & marketing are the worst I ever saw...can't blame their decissions really. In my country their prices are insanely high.One of the many,many examples is that the K7 is 50% more expensive than the Canon 50D.
They can't release good quality lenses with large apertures at decent prices,like the other brands have,so it's a dead brand after my opinion.

Hi Gordon,
I wish you would find a way to review the new Pentax K-7. IMHO it's the best camera (for the money) out there. Better than canikons. I see you are having difficulty obtaining one; I was afraid you didn't like them and would not review them but I can see why you wouldn't want to spend the money.... unless you need a GOOD camera. <grin>

@wrconley, the ball's entirely in Pentax's court. If they want their products reviewed, they need to supply them. Every other camera company supplies me with products to test from all over the world. It's just Pentax that either can't work it out, can't be bothered to, or simply doesn't want to work with Cameralabs. It seems a daft decision considering their position in the market and the fact my earlier Pentax reviews have generally been positive.

Sorry to hear the problems you are having. I must say I always appreciate you (IMHO) unbiased and photographer friendly reviews ....there is however the downside of continually being reminded of Wakatipu and the Remarkables .... lived in NZ a lot in the 70's and 80's and occasionally since ... when i first went there were practically no restaurants with a license ... but i still loved it.

A conversation developed in this thread which was esentially off-topic. As a result I've split out a number of posts which can now be found in the thread Split from "Why are there no more Pentax reviews?". If you were part of that conversation then please continue there. Thanks.